Cuttlefish Hunting Behavior

Cuttlefish Hunting Behavior

From February 2014 to February 2015, I collaborated with the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole, USA, to study cuttlefish, an invertebrate marine animal related to octopus and squid, from the perspective of neuroscience. My primary goal was to learn about their behaviour, how to take care of them, and how to modify our lab’s behaviour experiment setups for rats to work with cuttlefish.

During this time, I learned a lot about arduinos and cameras and how to film sea creatures. I took care of cuttlefish in all stages of their life cycle and even developed unique relationships with individuals.

Analysis

Hunting Behaviour Ethogram

Below are acrylic models I made to show the main phases of a cuttlefish hunt:

When a cuttlefish is ‘at rest’, or just hanging out, all of their arms lie flat over their mouth. Their eyes are usually on the sides of their head, in a position optimal for having a 360 degree view all around them. The body pattern on the cuttlefish’s mantle, or back, is optimised to camouflage the cuttlefish and blend into its surroundings.
When a cuttlefish first notices food or prey, it will turn to face the food or prey, and often it will raise its two middle arms.
As stealth hunters, cuttlefish sneak closer to their prey or let their prey come closer to them, as the cuttlefish hide by camouflaging themselves or burrowing into sand on the ocean floor. The two middle arms often remain raised in front of their face. When the cuttlefish is about one body length away from its food or prey, the next four arms create a barrel to guide and aim their tentacles, the tips of which can become visible during this phase.
When the cuttlefish is ready, it will throw its tentacles towards the food or prey, a moment that we call ‘tentacles go ballistic’ (TGB). The middle two arms are usually still raised, and the next four arms are still formed into a ‘barrel’ to aim the tentacles. During this phase, the bottom 2 arms spread out, as if to create a stabilizing tripod for the moment when tentacles go ballistic. The TGB moment also marks the appearance of the ‘tentacle shot pattern’, a unique, highly fractalated body pattern that appears only in this moment and not at any other time in the cuttlefish’s behavioural repetoire.

Plots

Below are some initial plots that show the frequency of different hunting events during each cuttlefish’s daily session in the Cuttle Shuttle hunting box:

Video analysis

Further analysis work on the Cuttle Shuttle video dataset can be found here.